TheRobin

I think the claim is more that, if you spend time and energy to create something then within that object is now your time and energy and taking that object would mean taking part of your time and energy that you expended earlier.An example would be, if you work 8 hours a day for a month making a nice guitar and someone takes the guitar, then you effectively lost 1 month of your time and energy. It would be identical to someone forcing you at gunpoint to slave for him for a month and build a guitar.And since you can defend youself against being enslaved, you can also denfend yourself against someone taking stuff that you created or traded for. Or if you want to argue that you have a right to defend your body, but not what your body creates, then what is the argument for why you can defend your body?

Well, I asked clarifying question at two points, I never got answers. You just repeatedly state that there are landowners who own all the land and buy up land. Nowhere do you explain how they become owners and who would sell it and why they would reasonably sell it. To take my vilalge exmaple: Say there's an island with 1000 people, each has it's own small hut and some garden-area around it andd all the land is used that way. Assume one guy is a trillionaire (which is already an impossible occurence in that scenario, but anyway) and wants to buy up all the land. Who would sell it and why? If there's no other land to get a hut on the whole island, then no price is worth being homeless. Unless you then share a hut with another guy and enjoy the new richness that way, but then no problem occurs. At some point the space will become too small to share and be comfortable with, so people will stop selling their huts/land anway, cause they can't find any other living space. Like, even if I'm offered a billion dollar, if I have nowhere to live, there's no benefit to it. Unless the guy then wants to rent me the space, but then I can impose conditions on the rent beforehand if I'm worried about that. But in that case the guy just makes huge losses and every one else wins hugely, which also wouldn't be a problem and wouldn't lead to this quasi-state. And neither of this requires people being irrational and acting against their own self-interest

I don't say this to piss you off, but I don't really care that much about sharing the same conclusion here. If the case is not made using reason and is not resolved using reason, then any shared conclusion is merely accidental and might as well vanish tomorrow. Also if you don't really reason your position through rigurously you defintely will shy away people who do use reason rigorously which is quite the opposite of what I'd prefer (not that you or anyone has to care about that ofc). So now you have a supposed problem that you solve by saying people should behave irrationally, I mean, how bad a case can you make for an idea, if the solution to a problem is "behave irrationaly, cause if you behave rationaly, we'd hav a huge problem in our ideal society"? Which is why I still think it would serve you better to think through the origins of the supposed problem again (that imo you still haven't been able to show could even theoretically occur), before going off to other people and trying to talk with them about Anarcho-Capitalism, as imo it would just the rational people off if that's how you present the case.

A thing that came to my mind was the SNES game Secret of Mana 2. I remember playing that with a friend a while back and it was quite fun. He also played it with his girlfriend, who isn't even really that into games, but enjoyed it none the less. It's a kind of action/adventure/rpg with nice intuitive controls and a cool fantasy story. (Or at least I remember enjoying the story when I last played it, which was quite a while back though). Just get an emulator on the PC with at least two joypads and you're good to go basically.

If there would be 10'000 people having their own house, there would already be 10'000 people owning land in our village. How do you even get to a point where you have only 10'000 people owning a whole country (assuming the country is actually the size of an average and also assuming they own all the empty land as well (how would they get to own the empty land btw?))?

I'd say it's not a tu quoque, because if you argue against property rights it is by defintion impossible to act in accordance with the principle, making it impossible to have it as a valid principle for any action.So it's not a failure to act consistently in accordance with the position, but the position is defined in such a way that no one can ever act in accordance with the position.

how would they get the land in the first place? It would literally billions of people to sell their land to those 3 cartel guys. Why would they sell at all? And if they do, how can they then legitimately complain later that they don't own their land anymore? And how would the remaining (still unowned) land be acquired by the cartelers?To me the land question (which seems to come up every now and then) is a good example of starting a problem in the middle and not careing about how the situation would arise in the first place, which seems practically impossible to occur, to me at least.

There seems to be this false dilemma of either being angry or forgiving as the only two optons. If a person is constantly and unchangeingly behaving in an mean or aggressive manner towards you and as a result that makes you angry (cause you don't want that to happen), then that's a good thing. The question is more what do you do then. If you talk to said person and they don't care and don't change their behaviour then surely, it will get to your health, but more so because you're constantly being near a threat, which will trigger the respective bodily imulses and hormones.Another option would be to leave, once it's clear the person won't change as a means of self-protection. That way you won't be constantly angry, cause you're not constantly around that person.Forgiveness would be when the person understand and acknowledges his or her bad behaviour and makes restitution and changes hsi behaviour. That way you can have a more happy and mutually beneficial relationship, which is healthy too.Most people don't accept or understand or act in the knowledge, that they can leave a situation at any time (usually at least). And since that doesn't even seem to be on the table as an option this false dilemma is created that only serves to perpetrate to problem instead of really solving it.Forgiveness as it's described usually just means surpressing one's own emotions towards people in one's life, which itself isn't healthy either. It's the sacrifice of one's own happyness and energy for the sake of others who don't want to change and don't want to treat you in a respectful or nice manner, so this only serves bad people in the end at the cost of the good people.

okay, but then you'd have to modify your orignal argument to include self-ownership, when there's a potential (or reasonable assumption) for reson to develop later, which then retroactively grants self-ownership even during a time where reason is not present and maybe explain why that works. (Or something along those lines).But I fully agree with aggresion being neither moral nor necessary in either case. I just have a hard time justifying it or seeing why the ability to reason is the essential criteria. I mean, I see how reason is necessary for BEING a moral agent, but as you said, the baby certainly can't be thought of a morally responsible for it's actions. And the question is around the actions of other people that affect the baby.Also if reason is the criteria for personhood, then mentally retarded people or people with brain damage or senile old people would have no rights whatsoever,as they can't reason and wouldn't count as having self-ownership.

Now you got me confused though. IF the baby doesn't have self-ownership, then how can you claim it's immoral to hit it? Wouldn't that then be the equivalent of hitting a dog for purpose of behaviour modificiation?

well, taking away the ice cream is kind of a weird example, as the parent must've handed it to them in the first place. But yeah, a lot of standrad parenting stuff is quite ridiculous when you think it through for a few seconds imo.

Ah makes more sense as a commenary then, just seems a tad out of place though in my opinion. (Whatever my opinion's worth ofc) But to address your point then, I didn't say people's actions are motivated by damaging the bus, but that's still what's gonna happen. So how would that matter in regards of who initiated force first? Empirically, motivation counts for nothing as it's not something you can measure in the moment anyway. But seeing how an action results in property damage is objectively true, regardless, so if a person takes that action, he or she has initiated force at that point. Or where do you disagree here?

@ribuck: I don't quite understand your rebuttal. As far as I get dsayers claim, the man would be the one initiation force (or attempting to) against the busowner, so pulling him away would be purely defensive.

So, I decided to take a little holiday too. I'll be staying from Wednesday evening (23.April) to Tuesday Afternoon. I'll be at the West Side Inn Hotel (http://www.westsideinn.nl/en/index.html) (I don't know how good or bad it is, my first time there as well as my first time in Amsterdam). Looking forward to meeting up with you guys

How do you define proof in mathematics then? As far as I understand it, it math, when you can show, how something is valid within the framework of the basic axioms that's mathematical proof. Or how would you proof something simple like 2+2=4? Or do you count that as a definition too?

No, I see how you can derive numbers from the senses (either via amount or ratio aspects). Even negative numbers can make sense empirically, if you include directions (where negative would be the opposite direction or something like that).But I don't see how in reality you could ever observe or derive the squareroot of negative one (which is the imaginary number (or see Rex's link)). So I'd count that as an example of something that can be proofen, but is outside the realms of empirical observation.

@Falsaurius: I wouldn't see why both claims shouldn't be equally true, as both accurately describe aspects of reality. @dsayers: Does that count as proof though? The theorem claims to be valid for each and every one of an unlimited amount of rectangular triangles, so how can it count as proof when you show that it works with a few specific triangles? Also, I too would be curious to hear the reasoning behind the imaginary number in mathematics and how they were derived from the senses (or not). Cause that seems to me of the few things that aren't found in empirical reality that still can be proofen valid.

I think the thing about a priori claims are, that you can't proof them via empirical evidence (like, I can't proof you're an actual conscious human being typing), but the action the person does would not make any sense without that assumption. And we can know that from our own experience. dsayers: I don't see how the pythagorean theorem can be proven without numbers, as it is a claim about a certain aspect ratio of lines that are in a specific constelation to each other. So how would you proof that without numbers, if you can't even explain the theorem without numbers (be they implied or openly stated)?

I apologize in advance for possibly hijacking the threat a little here, but: How would you know that? What would "know" even mean if there's a total absence of any input of any kind (i.e. having no senses)?As far as I would see it having no sensory input is the same as not existing (from a subjective point of view at least).

The entropy problem doesn't apply cause it's not a closed system (you eat food and drink and extract the leftovers). The entropy problem is solved by things of lower entropy going in and things of higher entropy being discarded (damn, I can't find a good word in the translator, sorry).Also, giving ignorance another name (God, Higher Power) doesn't solve the problem of ignorance

For me, I'd say I was more interesting in weird things when I was less connected to myself and, as a consequence of that, the world around me. With weird I mean stuff that isn't too logical or empirical and/or leaves one with a sense of not knowing what really happened, unable to make a clear connection between events of a story (Like the mentioned David Lynch movies for instance, but I'd certainly not include novels by Neil Gaiman for instance, as that's just very good and incredibly creative fantasy).Now I have to say though, I find such movies or stories rather boring and/or annoying. Things like the end of the movie Inception come to mind, where some people really enjoy not knowing or guessing/riddling what truly happened and that I just find rather annoying or irritating to a small degree. Like "come on, really? yawn.."So given that theory, I'd be inclined to ask: How much do you feel connected to yourself and the world. Say in terms of having somethign you really enjoy doing, long term plans that you work towards, being surrounded by people you acn talk honestly and openly with? (If you don't mind me asking)

Last time I checked, physics didn't make claims about consciousness (which is still something biologists and neurologist are in the midst of figuring out anyway)

DO we get education right now? (I don't remember much from school that actually served me in real live, safe for reading writing and some basic math and I hear in the US a large percentage of school absolvents aren't even literate (me being from Switzerland not the US or Canada).

okay, I'm out. I don't think repeating what I say once more will do the trick and you start putting words in my mouth at the end (that the truth will somehow fuck up society), which is usually a sign to stop having a conversation (at least for me).

Well, don't most have some sort of "if you kill yourself you go to hell"-thing in their belief anyway? Also I'd assume unconciously they don't truly belief it anyway (seeing how they react to tragedy and such. Like look at 9/11 as a gross example: How many Christians were happy, that people went to heaven there?)Also, I've never heard of a negative NDE, so assuming the afterlife would be less struggle is pretty much granted, from all the NDE's people seemed to have imo. In general, peopel know it's bullshit to a large enough degree, that they don't act on it, but they ignore that knowledge to a degree, so they can keep hoping/wishing for something better as a method of not having to confront the problems that would cause in their life/community/relationships.But if an afterlife (and as a result a somewhat accuaret idea of it's quality) could be scientifically proven, then yes, I'd assume that would have a huge impact, precisely because people do act on facts rather than fiction.